The latest parlor game for Labour backbenchers is to check a Web site predicting what would happen if a general election were held tomorrow. The site is called Financial Calculus and every few weeks it takes an amalgamation of the most recent polls and judges which parties will emerge triumphant at the election. For British Prime Minister Tony Blair, its predictions are becoming increasingly gloomy.
Perusing the site last week, Labour members of parliament (MPs) were told they were facing meltdown. A majority of 165 would be cut to just 24. More than 70 MPs would lose their seats and their livelihoods. Labour would be left with a small majority, facing a parliament of knife-edge votes and regular defeats.
Such bleak predictions are concentrating minds in the bars and restaurants of Westminster. Last week the talk was as open as it was disloyal. When will Blair go? Can he hang on until a general election? If he does, how much longer can he continue after an election victory? A year? Eighteen months? A whole third term?
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
Eleven days ago there was the U-turn on holding a referendum on the EU constitution. Then the government announced plans for identity cards, not universally welcomed on Labour's backbenches.
On April 27, Blair made a speech on immigration when he said that the government would again "get tough," a message that was construed as another U-turn. Then there is Iraq. Lack of progress on the Middle East. Problems are piling up at the prime minister's door.
Three of Blair's closest allies, Stephen Byers, Peter Mandelson and Alan Milburn, felt so concerned at the fallout from the European issue that they wrote a joint article in the Guardian trying to shore up the prime minister. Blair appeared out of sorts, distracted, without his fabled "grip" on events. The chattering about his future got louder.
Last week we spoke to senior Labour backbenchers from across the party. Most were chairmen or chairwomen of select committees, chosen because of their seniority within the party and divergent political views. Many admitted that Blair's future had been one of the main topics of conversation over the past fortnight. What was surprising was how many spoke of a "post-Blair era." One even admitted that the whole debate had changed in the past two weeks and, although he had not before, he had now given serious thought to "LAB" -- Life After Blair.
Some of those questioned gave wholehearted backing to the prime minister, saying that he should continue for a full third term; the majority said he should fight the general election, and probably the referendum campaign on the European constitution, before quitting; a handful said he should go before the general election. It is a marker of the mood among backbenchers -- twitchy, uncertain, concerned about the leadership.
In an effort to calm nerves, the prime minister made a speech on education at the National Association of Head Teachers' annual conference last Sunday. A speech by Blair on a Sunday is unusual; that it is a bank-holiday weekend is even more surprising.
Clearly, Blair is fearful that he is not on the front foot. The last time he spoke to the union was five years ago.
His Cabinet allies are doing their best. In an interview for today's GMTV program, Culture Minister Tessa Jowell says Blair's leadership is "indispensable." On the same program Byers demands a "Blairite" manifesto to convince voters that Blair will indeed serve a full term. It all adds to the febrile atmosphere, with much talk in corridors of plots and fixes, alliances being formed and disbanded as Cabinet heavyweights jockey for position. Stories appearing yesterday even suggested that "friends" of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown were preparing for a snap leadership election. They were dismissed as "absolute rubbish."
Aides also suspect the Tories are now benefiting from leaks from disgruntled civil servants -- and from the increasing impatience of some Cabinet ministers, who sense Blair faltering.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's growing friendship with Brown may have been pushed to the fore by the wrangle over a European constitution referendum, but Labour MPs have been tracking it with interest for months, particularly during the row over university tuition fees. Straw, like Brown initially, made little secret of his unhappiness at the fees policy: some backbench rebels sent to be "talked round" by him before the crunch vote emerged convinced that Straw was privately sympathetic.
"The amazing thing is that people are now asking: `Who will you back in a leadership campaign?'" said one member of the government, reclining on the leather benches of the Strangers bar in the Commons last week. "People are already talking of the post-Blair era."
Newspaper columns have been full of bleak predictions that Blair is losing the political plot. The government is out of control. The country is in a distressed state. Number 10 and Blair's close allies dismiss such talk as political froth.
Blair, admittedly in a hole, is not about to commit political suicide just as the private briefings he is getting inside Number 10 are starting to tell him that the public services are finally beginning to improve, they say.
Why hand that on to your successor, highly likely to be the chancellor, to take all the credit?
As Blair told the Observer in an interview last year, if he stands in the next election -- which, barring calamity, people within Downing Street predict he will -- he will serve for a full third term.
"That has not changed, his appetite for the job is as obvious as it has ever been," said one Number 10 adviser.
Last week the point was reiterated. A senior member of the Cabinet had lunch with the political editors of Channel 4 News and the Times. He confirmed what Blair had said. The headlines the next day said that Blair would go "on and on," a deliberate echo of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher's promise during the 1987 election campaign.
Three years later she resigned.
Number 10 officials insist these are simply short-term choppy waters. On the referendum and immigration, the government is now in the same place as the public, whatever the opprobrium heaped on them for the policy U-turns and accusations that they are pandering to the right-wing media.
This week sees the 25th anniversary of Thatcher's first election victory. On the same day Labour will launch its campaign for local elections to be held on June 10.
"We'll be talking about public services, Michael Howard will be at a dinner celebrating Thatcher," said one Number 10 official. "That's not a bad place to be."
Younger Labour MPs are also beginning to mutter about a lack of loyalty. The 1997 intake, many of them surprised that they even managed to get into parliament, owe Blair their careers.
"We are a loyal group: this is the man who won us two huge majorities," said one MP who first won his seat in 1997. "Things have been going so well for so long, we thought the norm was being 10 points ahead in the polls. But do we now suddenly gamble everything even though we are still ahead?"
Few see any way that Blair would resign now.
He is a man with his eye on his legacy. When things are at their worst is when he is least likely to quit.
Win a referendum and he might feel vindicated and strong enough to announce that he is off. But those close to him point out there is then the issue of getting Britain into the single currency.
For the Conservatives there is division over what to hope for: many Tory MPs calculate that a tired Blair, who could be portrayed as struggling on past his sell-by date, would be easier to tackle than a reinvigorated Brown promising a "new broom" approach to past failings.
"There is no doubt Brown would be able to unite Labour much more, but he's less of a polished performer," said one senior Tory source.
"There's something dour and cold about the way he does things; he's less able to engage middle Britain. But it's a bit like it was with Thatcher: you get to a stage where people want change. If the party in power says `OK, we'll change the guy at the top,' there's an element of people saying: `Well, they have changed, that will do.'"
If Blair were to go early, Tories also fear they would lose a potent weapon -- exploiting his associations with excessive spin and untrustworthiness, linked to the row over WMD in Iraq.
Intriguingly, the Liberal Democrats, whose leader, Charles Kennedy, is much closer to Blair, have made no plans for a succession, believing he will be facing them over the dispatch box for some years to come.
"He's not going anywhere, at this stage anyway," said one source.
One senior Labour backbencher, himself no paid-up Blairite, admitted Blair was still the best man for the job.
"I'm reminded of Hilaire Belloc," he said. "Always keep a-hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse."
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